Interesting take on the whole issue. Sometimes when you live in a place or do something for so long, you start to think it is normal. I thought that pork sausage pizza was common around the country. Now I know that it is not. Thank you. As a kid, I couldn't gain weight no matter how hard I tried. I was scrawny. I took Joe Weider weight gainer shakes, worked out at Gold's Gym for two hours a day to try to beat the horribly disease of scrawniness. This was back in the 80's.
As an adult I am now cursed with a muscular lean physique that I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
But think for a second about that last paragraph of your post. Cultural shift = Social Engineering. People should indeed eat less and excercize more. Nobody debates that.
I won't demand that the Gubmint make you and everyone else go through my rigorous workout regimen. No action is truly legitimate unless it is done voluntarily. I do it because I love it and I want to. Not because the Gubmint tells me to.
And that goes for Gubmint efforts to coerce people to get with the collectivist program to stop drinking, stop eating fries and stop smoking for the common good. It's none of the Gubmint's f'ing business what free citizens do.
"Your body belongs to the state. Your body belongs to the Fuhrer. Health is not a private matter."
---Nazi Socialist Party slogan
Eric,
You are right, of course. One’s body — like one’s mind — is and should be one’s own. And when you had a problem you fixed it, as it should be — and as I did when I recognized that what I was doing wasn’t working for me.
By “cultural shift”, I did not mean “social engineering”. Social engineering is when others think for you and tell you what you must do. It’s none of the government’s business how much you or I weigh — or what we eat.
However, having said that, what you heard was a sociological term from my education in Behavioral Science.
It is one thing to study human behavior in groups which is what sociology is — and that I do believe in. It is another thing for the government to play Big Brother in solving what they believe to be “society’s ills” by using social engineering methodology.
None of us should ever have to be some social engineer’s lab rat!